Westboro Baptist founder Fred Phelps and thrash metal pioneers Slayer were not the best of friends. You might remember how the Westboro faithful threatened to protest Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman’s funeral, but no-showed when the time came. Well now, according to The Tyranny of Tradition, the band is returning the favor and protesting Phelps funeral:
Carrying signs saying “God Hates Self-Righteous Fanatics” and “At Least Satan Has Good Taste In Music”, members of the heavy metal rock band Slayer today camped outside the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas waiting to protest the funeral of WBC leader Fred Phelps.
That’s believable enough, right? It certainly is for a good chunk of the Internet because a lot of people refused to read the part about Tyranny being satire and are reporting the protest as fact. From Noisey:
Gullible metal heads and the bandwagon of people looking to dump on Phelps started sharing links to unreliable sources saying that the members of Slayer were camped outside the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, with no photographic evidence or quotes or basically anything that would lend a shred of legitimacy to the claim. Well surprise surprise, apparently not everything you read on SomeJackoff’sBlogspot.com is factually accurate. We checked with a Slayer representative who denied the rumor and said this:
“Anyone who knows anything about Slayer would know that this was a send up.”
I don’t even think you need to know anything about Slayer to know this was a send up. Common sense would dictate that something is up once you get to the portion of the original article that claims Fred Phelps was in a band called “Jesus Hitler” or has bigots comparing anyone to Harvey Milk.
It’s no different than the people who believe The Onion though. Maybe a little more crazier, but it’s still funny. The only thing worse than this being fake is the fact that Fred Phelps will have no funeral to protest. In lieu of that, I think the only proper thing to do now of course is listen to some Slayer.
